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Want to tell Malayali friends of immoral Congress-CPI-M tie-up: Mamata
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Kolkata, March 11 

Yet again targeting the Congress-Left Front seat understanding in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday reiterated that she would campaign in Kerala ahead of the polls there to tell people of the "immoral alliance".

"Why not? I want to tell my Malayali brothers and sisters, look there (in Kerala) the CPI-M (which spearheads the Left Front in Bengal and the Left Democratic Front in Kerala)and Congress are battling it out, but in Bengal they are great friends," she shot back when a media person asked her whether she was serious about going to the southern state for campaigning.

"Why is this immoral alliance? If there is an alliance, it should be throughout the country," Banerjee, also the Trinamool Congress supremo, said here after releasing her party's manifesto for the Bengal assembly elections.

"So in Kerala, the Communist Party of India-Marxist is showing they are not with the Congress, and the Congress is not with the CPI-M. And in Bengal, Congress and CPI-M are working together.

"And people must know it. And I will go there to campaign," she said.

Asked when she would go to Kerala, Banerjee said: "There is lot of time. First let the Bengal polls get over." 

A week back, ridiculing the Congress and the CPI-M for their proposed electoral tie-up in the state, Banerjee had said she would like to campaign in Kerala to expose the two parties which have reduced the coming assembly polls in the southern state into a "farce".

Dripping sarcasm, she had then said the CPI-M and the Congress should form a "joint venture" and divide the assembly seats equally between themselves to save the expenses for holding the polls.

At the media conference called to release the manifesto, Banerjee accused the Congress of "selling off" its flag to the CPI-M, and said this was the reason she and her associates came out of the Congress and formed the Trinamool in 1998.

"Now it has been proved that our fight was completely correct. Today without caring for ideals and political philosophy, the Left and the Congress are coming together. The only aism' they now follow is 'opportunism'."

West Bengal will have seven-phase polls between April 4 and May 5. Keral is slated to hold a single-day poll on May 16.